Sheffield school children ‘Adopt a Gritter’

Thirteen of Sheffield’s fleet of gritters now have their very own personality, thanks to creative school children across the city who have named the vehicles.

The Streets Ahead team who grit the roads when winter descends, challenged pupils from 13 different schools across the city to come up with a suitable wintry name for each of the gritting vehicles.

Gretta Gritta, Ice Warrior, Sammy Snow, Selwyn Salt, The Bear, Melter Skelter, Girty Gritter, Snowy Steve, The Gritternator, Gritgrinder, General Grit, Steel City Gritter and Snow Catcher will be seen working hard this winter to keep the roads of Sheffield safe when temperatures drop below zero.

Cllr Jack Scott, Sheffield City Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment, Recycling and Streetscene, said: “Asking children to get involved with naming our fleet of gritters is really exciting for them, especially when they see their adopted gritter out on the streets of Sheffield during the winter months. Children have a wonderful imagination and some fantastic wintry themed names were suggested. Well done to all the pupils that took part.

“We have made some changes to our winter maintenance service this year and this also includes some of our gritting routes and location of grit bins. By working with the schools this also gave us a good opportunity to inform parents of the changes we have made and to encourage them to prepare themselves this winter.”

Streets Ahead’s Highways Operations Manager, Jim Pursglove, added: “We’re really excited that our snow gritters have been named by local children. We’ve also been into schools and spoken to the children about keeping safe when ice and snow is on the ground. We like to get schools involved with lots of our Streets Ahead projects where possible, engaging them in the work that we do across the city.

“The Streets Ahead team are ready for the winter and have over 16,000 tonnes of grit and 19 gritters and snow ploughs, as well as 15 tractor ploughs.”